Biuro Szyfrów

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The Saxon Palace (Polish: Pałac Saski ) in Warsaw was the seat of Biuro Szyfrów
Employed at Biuro Szyfrów (before 1928). Maksymilian Ciężki is standing on the far right , with Jan Kowalewski sitting next to him.

The Biuro Szyfrów (BS) ( ['bjurɔ' ʃɨfruf] , listen ? / I , German: "Chiffrenbüro") was a department of the Polish secret service for deciphering secret foreign communications. Audio file / audio sample

Only a few months after the BS was founded in 1919, the cryptanalysts there succeeded in deciphering Soviet radio communications in 1920 during the Polish-Soviet War . In 1932 were from Biuro Szyfrów German first radio messages Reichswehr broken , with the rotor cipher machine Enigma was encrypted. Shortly before the start of the Second World War , on July 26 and 27, 1939, the entire knowledge about the Enigma was passed on to the British and French by the Polish code breakers at the secret meeting of Pyry , about 20 kilometers southeast of Warsaw in the Kabaty forest of Pyry Secret service handed over.

Polish-Soviet War

During the Polish-Soviet War (1919–1921) , the then still young team of the newly founded BS broke several hundred secret messages from the Soviet side. Successful cryptanalysts included then- lieutenant Jan Kowalewski  (picture) as well as three important mathematics professors, namely Stanisław Leśniewski , Stefan Mazurkiewicz and Wacław Sierpiński . As a result, the Polish leadership was well informed, which contributed significantly to the later Polish victory.

structure

During the interwar period , the BS, located in the right wing of the Pałac Saski , was divided into four sections with different tasks:

presentation task Employee Remarks
BS1 Own ciphers Gwido Langer
Maksymilian Ciężki
Ludomir Danilewicz
Leonard Danilewicz 		Developed the Polish rotor cipher machine Lacida .
BS2 Radiomonitoring Gwido Langer
Maksymilian Ciężki
Ludomir Danilewicz
Leonard Danilewicz 		Radio listening stations at various locations in the country, equipped with technology from the AVA factory .
BS3 Russian ciphers Jan Graliński  † 1942
Piotr Smoleński  † 1942 		Responsible listening stations in Warsaw (№ 1), Lida  (№ 2), Rivne  (№ 6) and Kolomyja  (№ 7).
BS4 German ciphers Maksymilian Ciężki
Marian Rejewski
Henryk Zygalski
Jerzy Różycki  † 1942
Wiktor Michałowski
Antoni Palluth  ( AVA )
Jan Leśniak  ( VO ) 		Built the Enigma after  (1932), developed the raster method , the cyclometer  (1934), the Zygalski perforated sheets  (1938) and the Bomba  (1938).
Listening stations in Kraków  (№ 3), Poznan  (№ 4) and Starogard Gdański  (№ 5).

Second World War

At the legendary meeting in Pyry, the Polish cryptanalysts led by Marian Rejewski showed the stunned British and French also replicas of the German Enigma

After the German attack began on September 1, 1939, the Biuro Szyfrów (BS) was to be evacuated to Brest in the east of the country. However, this plan failed due to the attack of the Soviet Union on Poland on September 17, 1939 and the subsequent Soviet occupation of eastern Poland. Thus the new plan was born to evacuate to France. With the help of the French Embassy, most staff arrived BS to France and continued their work in the " PC Bruno " in Paris under the name Ekipa Z continued. Employees of the BS were Marian Rejewski , Jerzy Różycki and Henryk Zygalski .

With the further advance of the Wehrmacht in June 1940 ( "Fall Rot" ), the French capital and thus also the PC Bruno base, only a few kilometers away, came into acute danger. Shortly after midnight on June 10th, the chief of the PC , Commandant ( Major ) Gustave Bertrand, decided to evacuate and flew with his staff to Oran in Algeria . France capitulated shortly afterwards and was divided. While the northern and western parts came under German occupation , the southern part remained unoccupied and declared a zone libre (German: "Free Zone") . In September, Bertrand and his team secretly returned to France and continued their work at a new location in the Château de Fouzes (German: Schloss Fouzes) near the municipality of Uzès in the zone libre . They chose “Cadix” as their new cover name .

After the British-American invasion of French North Africa , which began on November 8, 1942 , the Wehrmacht occupied the previously free southern zone of France ( company Anton ), whereupon Bertrand was forced to evacuate his crew and disband Cadix . Some made it to England and worked near London as Sekcja kryptologiczna batalionu radiowego Sztabu Naczelnego Wodza (German: "Cryptological Section of the Radio Battalion of the Commander-in-Chief ") of the Polish government-in-exile .

Meanwhile, British code-breakers in Bletchley Park , about 70 km north-west of London, were successfully deciphering German Enigma radio messages under the code name Ultra on the basis of Polish pre-war knowledge that they were able to use and further develop. After the war, one of them confessed:

"Ultra would never have gotten off the ground if we had not learned from the Poles, in the nick of time, the details both of the German military's [...] Enigma machine , and of the operating procedures that were in use."

"Ultra could never have picked up speed if we hadn't learned the details of the Enigma machine of the German armed forces as well as the procedural rules from the Poles in the short space of time ."

- Gordon Welchman

literature

  • Jan Bury: Polish Codebreaking during the Russo-Polish War of 1919-1920 . Cryptologia , 28: 3, 2004, pp. 193-203.
  • Chris Christensen: Review of the IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for “The First Breaking of Enigma Code”. In: Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, pp. 178-193. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  • David Kahn : Seizing the Enigma - The Race to Beak the German U-Boat Codes 1939-1943. Barnes & Noble, New York 2001, ISBN 0-7607-0863-0 .
  • Dermot Turing : XYZ. The Real Story of How Enigma was Broken. The History Press , Stroud 2018, ISBN 978-0-7509-8782-0 .
  • Gordon Welchman : The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes. Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, ISBN 0-947712-34-8 .

Web links

Commons : Biuro Szyfrów  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralph Erskine: The Poles Reveal their Secrets - Alastair Dennistons's Account of the July 1939 Meeting at Pyry . Cryptologia. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 30.2006,4, p. 294
  2. ^ Jan Bury: Polish Codebreaking during the Russo-Polish War of 1919–1920. Cryptologia , 28: 3, 2004, pp. 193-203, doi: 10.1080 / 0161-110491892872
  3. ↑ Chris Christensen: Review of IEEE Milestone Award to the Polish Cipher Bureau for `` The First Breaking of Enigma Code '' . Cryptologia . Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Taylor & Francis, Philadelphia PA 39.2015,2, p. 182. ISSN  0161-1194 .
  4. ^ Gordon Welchman: The Hut Six Story - Breaking the Enigma Codes. Allen Lane, London 1982; Cleobury Mortimer M&M, Baldwin Shropshire 2000, ISBN 0-947712-34-8 , p. 289.